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Alisa Lask: The Exosome Era of Skincare
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Episode 293 asks: what happens when beauty culture moves from correction toward regeneration, and why should we be more demanding about the evidence behind products that promise younger-looking skin? Alisa Lask, CEO of Rion Aesthetics and ( plated )™ Skin Science, explains exosomes as the body’s cellular messaging system, with platelet-derived signals that may support renewal, barrier function, and post-procedure recovery.
The conversation separates credible regenerative aesthetics from marketing noise, with practical guidance on PRP, lasers, sunscreen, skinspan, and what to ask before trusting any new skincare claim. Lask also discusses hair health, menopause-related thinning, and the larger possibility that exosomes may reshape how medicine thinks about repair.
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Key Moments
“We're moving from hurt, so it heals to tell [your skin] to renew.”
“You want proof, not promise.”
“Consistency is the most important thing.”
Connect with Alisa Lask
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Tune in to hear more on this episode of The AGEIST Podcast or check out the full interview transcript.
I do see you'll look back and you'll say in five years, like, okay, it wasn't stem cells, it was the exosomes, and this is going to be the future of regenerative medicine. We are the first and only company that has platelet-derived exosomes in a topical skin tree. And why that's so different is because it's truly biotech, biotechnology or using biologics, right? And it's in a beauty. And there have been a lot of companies, you think about cosmetic ingredients are usually botanicals, you know, some type of chemicals, but it's really hard to have true biotech meat beauty. Exosomes are sort of like the text messaging system in your body. It's how your cells communicate to one another. And so there are exosomes that signal cell death, exosomes that signal inflammation, and there's an exosome in particular that signals renewal, regeneration. And so if you think about platelets, platelets are your first responder to wounds, right? When you slice your hand, as I did the other day on my farm here, your first response, right? You see your blood, your platelets. So they have a natural propensity to repair. Like that's their job. And they speak that language of repair and renewal for the skin in particular. And so these exosomes that we've been able to kind of find in this renewal signal are what we have in the bottle.
SPEAKER_01Welcome to the Ages Podcast. I'm David Stewart, and this is a conversation at the intersection of culture and longevity. Today we're talking about skin, but it goes deeper than anti-aging or chasing some idea of perfect complexion. We're talking about skin as an organ, skin as part of health span. Skin as something that communicates, repairs, protects, and reflects what's going on underneath. My guest this week is Alyssa Lask. Alyssa is the CEO of Ryan Aesthetics, and they're a company working in regenerative aesthetics, specifically around platelet-driven exosome technology. They have a product called Plated, that you may have heard of. Before Ryan, she built a serious career across pharmaceuticals, medical devices, and aesthetics. She had leadership roles at Eli Lilly, Allergen, Zimmer BioNet, and others, where she led U.S. aesthetics and oversaw multiple FDA approvals. So she's not coming at this from the land of blueberry scented moisturizers, and we're going to hear a little bit about that later. Though I do seem to have a personal weakness for that. When it comes to results, Alyssa is very clear about the difference between promise and proof. And exosomes seems to be having a moment. The word is everywhere. And when a word gets popular in wellness, it can mean almost anything. Alyssa helps explain what exosomes actually are, why the source matters, why human cells need human communication, and how this may fit into the larger movement from correction to regeneration. For the past however many decades, aesthetics has been about freezing, filling, resurfacing, and correcting. And it's true, some of that is quite useful. Some of it works. But the more interesting question is, at least to me, how can we help the body act more like itself, only better? More on that in a moment. Before we get to Alyssa, a quick favor. Hey, if you're enjoying this show, please give us a five-star review. We would love that. It helps us share more of these conversations, and it only takes a moment. We'll talk to Alyssa right after a brief word from our sponsors. Every movement we make starts with energy, and that energy starts inside our cells. As we age, our mitochondria, the little engines that power us, can become less efficient. That affects strength, recovery, resilience, all the things we actually care about. Timeline developed MitaPure with Urolithin A to support metophagy, the process that helps clear out damaged mitochondria so our cells can work better. I think of it as working closer to the source. Timeline's clinically proven formula is now available at a new, lower price. MidaPure now starts at $79 when you go to Timeline.com slash AGIST. That's Timeline.com slash AGIST. This season I've been paying more attention to the energy curve. Coffee can be useful, but too much of it and I end up wired than flat. Element Lemonade Iced Tea has been a better afternoon move. It uses full black tea extract with electrolytes, so the caffeine feels steadier and there's no sugar, artificial colors, or dodgy ingredients. Sharp and clear is the goal, especially when it's hot out and hydration matters. Get a free eight-count sample pack of Element's most popular drink mix flavors with any purchase at drinkelement.com slash aegis. Find your favorite flavor or share with a friend. That's D R-I-N-K-L-M-N-T.com slash agist. Let's give Alyssa Lask a call right now. Alyssa, so nice to meet you. Where are you located today?
SPEAKER_00I'm calling in from the Midwest. I'm a Midwest girl. I am on a 200-acre farm in Lexington, Kentucky. And I'm proud to say that we have horses and dogs and cats and all kinds of wonderful animals out here. So if you knew what I did the rest of the time, besides doing skincare, you would be like, oh my God, she drives a tractor and shovels manure installs.
SPEAKER_01And that sort of brown lump that's behind you. What's that? Is that true?
SPEAKER_00Well, there's three dogs in the room with me. There are three rescues. I'm really involved in dog rescue, and I can't say no. I have all these foster failures, but I love the animals. I do I joke with my husband that in a fire he's on his own and I'm taking the dogs first. So, but I love them.
SPEAKER_01Today we're gonna talk about skin and we're gonna talk about exosomes. Sound good.
SPEAKER_00Perfect. Right up my alley.
SPEAKER_01Okay, excellent. So that everybody knows who are you and how is it that you know so much about exosomes?
SPEAKER_00Well, great question. So I am actually a classically trained marketer that before I sort of got into this, I'd been working for Nestle, Eli Lilly, I worked in pharmaceuticals, so I managed major biologic drugs, medical devices. And then maybe 10 or so years ago, I got into medical aesthetics, but that's products like Botox, Juvederm, Restulin, injectables, not cosmetics. I'd never really done much with cosmetics. And um, I thought I was done and doing board jobs. And I was meeting with a physician in West Palm Beach where we live in the winter, and he said, There's this great technology. These people up at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, which I'd never been to, have this exosome technology. And I said, Oh no, that's all marketing. There's no not interested. And so he's like, No, no, you need to go up there and and meet them. And I never had been up there, and I decided to go up and kind of the rest is history. I saw like this amazing technology that was gonna be the future.
SPEAKER_01Okay, what is that technology? Tell me.
SPEAKER_00We are the first and only company that has platelet-derived exosomes in a topical skin treatment. And why that's so different is because it's truly biotech, biotechnology or using biologics, right? And it's in a beauty. And there have been a lot of companies, you think about cosmetic ingredients are usually botanical, you know, some type of chemicals. But it's really hard to have true biotech meet beauty.
SPEAKER_01Okay, I got so many questions here. So let's start with is an exosome the same as a peptide? Like what's an exosome? Help me out here.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, it's a great question because it's a term that's so overused right now. It's like you see it everywhere and it means everything. But if you think about it just simply, exosomes are sort of like the text messaging system in your body. It's how your cells communicate to one another. And so there are exosomes that signal cell death, exosomes that signal inflammation, and there's an exosome in particular that signals renewal, regeneration. And so if you think about platelets, platelets are your first responder to wounds, right? When you slice your hand, as I did the other day on my farm here, your first response, right? You see your blood, your platelets. So they have a natural propensity to repair. Like that's their job. And they speak that language of repair and renewal for the skin in particular. And so these exosomes that we've been able to kind of find in this renewal signal are what we have in the bottle.
SPEAKER_01You said they were a true biologic. So where do they come from? Like, is there an exosome plant? Where do you get exosomes?
SPEAKER_00There's a lot of talk about exosomes from so many sources, but I think for us and for all the research that's been done, it's really, you know, human cells need human communication. And so these platelet-drived exosomes actually come from platelets from human donors. And so you'll say, Oh, oh, Alyssa, that's a lot. Um, but you think about you're you're using the power of the body, right? That's a biologic. And and these donors are donating platelets, and we take them right before they're ready to kind of no longer be used. There's certain timelines that they can be used for transfusion grade, and we freeze them and we send them to Rochester, Minnesota, and we work our magic there in terms of finding a way to get these platelets to produce these what we call renewasomes, renewing exosomes.
SPEAKER_01I've never done this and I've only heard about this. So there's platelet-rich plasma, PRP. It's like a blood product people are putting on their faces, or they were. I remember I remember something about the Kardashians like a decade ago or something.
SPEAKER_00A vampire face, right?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, like treatment. Is this in the same ballpark? Help me out here.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, so both from platelets, PRP is your own platelets, right? So you're pulling platelets, but the problem is, and again, we're a science company. And so if you look across all the peer-reviewed publications on stem cells and PRP, you'll see that 90% of the people really don't have a big impact. And it's only five to 10% across whatever you're treating that really walk across the stage and we say, oh my gosh, they had incredible results. And that's because the quality of your platelets differs so much. And so if I donate to my own, you know, I get PRP one day and I didn't sleep well and I had hamburgers and French fries the night before, the quality of my platelets that day isn't going to be as good as maybe when I'm eating a meta-training diet and I'm sleeping 10 hours and I'm exercising. And so you see a lot of variability in PRP. And that's why you think about we've had 20 years of stem cell research. We have not won FTA approved. And you see a lot of people that are really excited about PRP and then people that have no results. So it's just you got to go back to that publications that show, you know, it's really not as consistent and successful as we think.
SPEAKER_01I've had PRP injected in various joints of my body. It's never done anything other than irritate the joint for about a week.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. And so you would fall on that 90% that, you know, and even like my husband drew a flew across the country, right, to get something and same result, right? But and as we get older, the most important thing is you have a that propensity to produce these renewing kind of regenosomes is lower, right? I mean, that's why when you're younger, you heal so fast. They fall down, you heal, you know, all that wound repair is quick. And as you age, it's harder. And so, you know, as you kind of get 40, 50, 60, 70, like those are you can't get great PRP. And that's why this idea of pooling it. And the nice thing about platelets, because everyone has this visceral reaction, is that they're acellular. So there's no DNA. We are just getting from the platelets the signal. Think about the text message, just the text message, the exosome. That's what it is. So you're not getting someone's DNA, you're not getting someone's blood, you are getting the exosome, and that's it. And that's very different from a lab-created exosome, a plant exosome. I mean, plant exosomes can't talk to human exosomes, right? You don't we don't communicate with plants. So that idea is not the same. You get it's like nutrients, like getting a carrot to have a plant exosome.
SPEAKER_01So I put the exosome on my skin, and then how does it know like what to do where?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, so I mean, you think we're taking something that in the body naturally coordinates repair. So this exosome is actually going into the cell, unlike growth factors that sit on the outside of the cell, and it's actually telling the cell, signaling, right, these text messages, if we want to go back to some like our analogy that way, you know, the same alphabet, the same grammar, there's they're speaking, speaking fluent human skin to these cells, and they're telling them like, let's act like a younger cell, let's produce collagen, let's produce stolassin, let's reduce our cellular senescence. So it's like a broad kind of spectrum, which is what's so great about this technology. You know, most of the things before it's one ingredient, they did one thing. This is a kind of a broad renewal response.
SPEAKER_01One thing that does many things.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, one thing that does many things, exactly.
SPEAKER_01Fascinating. I want to pause here for a brief word from our sponsors. We're talking today about signals, the messages that tell the body what to do. And in a way, the same idea applies to our daily choices: what we eat, how we move, how we sleep, what we put on our skin. Small signals, repeated over time, become the life we live in. We'll be right back with Alyssa Lask. I used to think the afternoon fade was a caffeine problem. Have another coffee, push through, keep going. But caffeine mostly mutes the signal that tells you you're tired. The fatigue is still there, building underneath, and when it wears off, you feel the drop. What I like about Element Lemonade Iced tea is that it takes a different approach. It uses full black tea extract. So the caffeine comes with L-theanine and polyphenols, the way it exists in the plant. Then it adds a meaningful dose of electrolytes, sodium, potassium, and magnesium, the same foundation as Element's Core Hydration Mix. For me, that makes sense in the summer. Heat, training, travel, long work days, all of that asks more from the system. I reach for lemonade iced tea when I want something that feels clean, steady, and actually refreshing, with no sugar, artificial colors, or strange ingredients. Get a free eight-count sample pack of Elements most popular drink mix flavors with any purchase at drinkelement.com slash agist. Find your favorite flavor or share with a friend. Once again, that's D-R-I-N-K-L-M-N-T.com slash AGIST. Think about muscle health in terms of lifting weights and consuming protein, but there is a deeper layer underneath all of it, and that is cellular energy. Your muscle cells are packed with mitochondria because muscle takes a lot of energy to do its job. As we age, mitochondrial function naturally declines, and that can show up as lower energy, less strength, slower recovery, and a little less bounce back than we used to have. Timeline has spent more than 15 years researching mitochondrial health and developed mitopure, which contains urolithin A. Urolithin A supports metophagy, the body's process for clearing out damaged mitochondria and recycling cellular components. In one study, participants saw a 12% improvement in muscle strength in four months with no change in exercise. That gets my attention. For me, healthy aging means protecting capacity, the ability to move, train, recover, and keep showing up for the life I want. Supporting the cellular machinery underneath strength and energy feels like a very smart place to start. Timeline's clinically proven formula is now available at a new lower price. Midopure now starts at $79 when you go to Timeline.com slash AGIS. Suppose I were to use retina or vitamin C. And then also, does how does that does that have any communication with the exosome or is it a completely different thing?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I mean, we always get asked that. Who's getting kicked off the island in your skincare? But really, this is the foundation. It can build on good skincare, right? It goes on first on clean skin, and this is really, really important. It needs to be without any other ingredients because the things you use to clean your face, the things that you use in your sunscreen, which is absolutely required in your creams and your moisturizers, those don't play well necessarily with exosomes. And so it needs to go on, it needs to absorb five minutes, and then you can layer with your normal routine that plays very well with vitamin C, which is, you know, it's synergistic, different mechanism of action. If you're looking to simplify, we also know people that have gotten rid of growth factors and some of the more older type of technology. So it's it's really flexible and it's smart. It understands sort of what you need. I mean, when we look across our clinical trials, we saw a broad array of redness, you know, the visible reduction in lines, all the kinds of things that you're worried about as you're aging.
SPEAKER_01And so both of us are in sort of rural environments right now. But if you but if you're in a city, there's all this sort of stuff in the air that can disrupt the you know the the dermis. So and is that one of the things that the exosomes would say, like, oh, okay, we've got some like it's some environmental irritation here, and we we can we can address that.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, so barrier to your skin is super, super important. And if you think about exosomes, they have like almost 10 times the amount of antioxidant power of, say, a vitamin C because they work differently. So vitamin C is back to the days of Pac-Man, right? It goes one by one. We go into the cell and have a broader protection. So you're actually getting a broader protection against some of those stressors that you see in the environment.
SPEAKER_01I'm going back to your evolution from injectables or pharmaceuticals. And this seems to be this is a completely different thing, right? This is this is a whole different way. What I understand you telling me is that the exosomes are programming your skin to renew its, to repair and renew itself. Did that did I get that right?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, yeah, exactly. They're just using the language, they're speaking to the cells, and they're telling them, let's ask like younger, healthier cells, let's build that collagen, that'll last, and let's slow down that cellular senescence, that cellular aging. Let's try to protect the cell. Like internal sunscreen almost.
SPEAKER_01Wow, okay. So I I once had some laser done on my face. What they don't tell you is the smell. I don't know if you've ever had the laser done, but it's essentially Oh yes, I have had lots of lasers.
SPEAKER_00It's a great tool. It's been around for a while.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, it it's very effective, but there's a there's a healing process afterwards, right? So I yeah, what I'm thinking here is that plated with the exosomes would be really helpful right after laser treatment because your your skin is kind of a mess and you really you want repair and renew at that moment.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, exactly. So if you think about it, we're moving from hurt it so it heals to tell it to renew. So exosomes are almost flipping the model. So instead of triggering repair through damage, lasers, whatever, you're delivering a regenerative signal directly. So the same message the body sends to a healing site without the injury. Oh. The two are definitely complementary though. So we've done post-procedure, post-laser studies, and we show improvement around recovery. So pre-treatment ahead of time. So you kind of rev up the fiber blast. And then after you do the procedure, less downtime, less itching. I mean, these are in peer-reviewed publications. And so we know that they help even without the injury, but they also help when there is an injury.
SPEAKER_01Got it. Okay. So maybe I don't have to get lasered again because I I think there's just something just like I don't know. There's something that seems a little bit wrong about like burning your face. I don't know. This seems better.
SPEAKER_00Well, I think there's a place for lasers. Listen, I've been in aesthetics a long time. I do believe there's a place for lasers, and depending on how well you took care of your skin over the past so many years, how much you wear sunscreen, you know, spots, like things like that. If you want quicker results, there can be many things with a laser that are synergistic.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. Okay. Good, a good synergistic. I and that's I'm I'm I'm sort of always looking for like how can you put like two things together and get a better outcome? And that's what I understand.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, and for sure, if you pre-treat and um and do a procedure, you will see improved outcomes. And you know, we're publishing our second peer-reviewed data on that, and it looks you know very positive.
SPEAKER_01So we're talking about renewing and regenerating, which seems like sort of a newer way of um, how should we say, filling and filling and freezing, I guess was what correcting.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, we would correct. But now we're looking at biological optimization, right? So not just superficial, but true of skin regeneration.
SPEAKER_01You're at the forefront of this field. What are you seeing coming down the pike? What is there anything else out there that you're seeing interesting that that has caught your attention?
SPEAKER_00Aaron Powell Well, I think in our broader platforming, this platelet-derived exosome technology has broad applications, not just in cosmetics, but we actually have a different, what we call a purified exosome product that is where the other parts of the company with a parent company that's called REON, and it's doing studies in things like diabetic foot ulcers, knee osteoarthritis. We have a veterinary division called REON VET that we're treating animals with equine platelet derived exosomes. We'll be doing canine platelet drived. Exosomes next year. So this sort of discovery that our founders, interventional cardiologists, made at Mayo Clinic has broad application across many, many different things. We're in the early stages of that because those need to go through FDA trials. There is absolutely no exosomes approved for FDA use. So if you're going somewhere and someone's telling you to exosomes inject it, those are not FDA approved yet. And there's a reason for the process. So we're trying to do that correctly. Do the phase one, the phase two, phase three studies. But I do see you'll look back and you'll say in five years, like, okay, it wasn't stem cells, it was the exosomes. And this is going to be the future of regenerative medicine. It's going to be shelf stable. It's going to, you know, the founder's vision was you can have democratized regenerative medicine and it can be anywhere for anyone. They don't have to have something to spin the blood down or, you know, be in a situation where they have are producing good platelets. You can get this anywhere.
SPEAKER_01You are not the first person on this show to say that it's not the stem cells, it's the exosomes. As somebody who has sort of creaky joints, I'm I would love to find a you know the same sort of repair and rejuvenation that can happen with my skin to happen with my cartilage. That sounds really awesome. So I hope that's a good idea.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I think there's there's a little ways to go, but I think the early studies look very promising. And so we'll see what the next couple of years bring. And hopefully uh in a few years we'll talk again and we'll be talking about FDA approvals and some of the orthopedic areas.
SPEAKER_01I just want to circle back to skin. So if you wanted to define healthy skin, how do you define that?
SPEAKER_00That's a really good question. Because you know, we talk about like skin longevity and skin span. I think it's really a first barrier. We talked about barrier protection. I think it's collagen, elastin, and cellular senescence. So I think those are sort of some of the key factors that you need to have in place because if you have too much cellar senescence, no matter how much collagen, like you're like aging faster than you can keep up. If you don't have good barrier protection, you're not, you know, protecting what's underneath. If you're not using sunscreen, sunscreen is the absolute, every single person should be using sunscreen. But you know, I think you need a lot of those in place in order to make sure that your skin, which is your largest organ, we talk about longevity, your skin is your largest organ. So your skin health and your skin span should be very important to you if you're focused on longevity.
SPEAKER_01Okay, skin span. So that brings me, I got a couple of questions here. So if I'm applying exosomes to my skin, I put plated on my, I got a lot of, you can see here, there's a lot of bare skin. We can we can use a lot of product here. So if over how quickly will this impact?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, so obviously, depending on sort of the damage and how often you're using it, but in our clinical studies, our peer-reviewed published studies, patients showed impact as early as six weeks. But I think if you're really being honest with yourself, we look at ourselves every day so you don't actually see it. But I really think the 12-week mark, like you got to be committed to something for more than four to six weeks. I think that's when you really start seeing the skin peak because you have to have cellular turnover, right? These things have you're it's like you're building the foundation underneath, right? Before we were just putting stuff on the top to make it appear better. Here, you're asking the skin to be building the foundation from inside out. So you need to give it the time to do that. And I think it's important too that in our clinical studies, we use it twice a day for the first, you know, 12 weeks. So if you have varied, you know, you've like me, I was in the sun a lot. I'm Irish, lots of freckles. So for me, twice a day is good. Um for someone else, it once a day may be fine.
SPEAKER_01So uh twice a day is sort of the usual like you get up in the morning, you wash your face, and then plated.
SPEAKER_00Then you put your plate on. I let it make sure I wait my five minutes because all of our clinical data shows that's the time it needs to penetrate before you put other things on that will destroy the exosomes. And then I put on my sunscreen and any other things I want to use for the day, whatever my routine is. If I'm in a dry area, you can put moisturizer, whatever your normal routine is, you can just do it after that.
SPEAKER_01I see. And then same thing at night, wash off the sunscreen, everything else, whatever else is accumulated during the day, and then got it. Okay.
SPEAKER_00Consistency is the most important thing. So if you're like, I can't do it twice a day, it's just more important to have consistency. So try it once a day. If you do it in AM, PM, whatever works best for you. But there's different mechanisms, whether it's, you know, in the morning when you're waking up, it's sort of that internal sunscreen, like you're protecting the cells at night, you are actually repairing. So we're helping with the repair. So there are reasons to use the product in the AM and PM scientifically, but the consistency is the most important that you're using something every day.
SPEAKER_01Amazing. I'm curious, you you mentioned this original research at Mail. What is it that they were looking for? Like I feel like this is sort of an like an adjunct discovery, but tell me, like, what's the original science?
SPEAKER_00The founders are interventional cardiologists. They were working in the cardiac van Cleve regenerative medicine labs and 15 years of research on stem cells. These guys were stem cells. They believe in stem cells. Our physicians are founders. And they started looking at the data and realized that like it wasn't that great. And they stumbled upon a discovery that it was really not the stem cells, it was the exosomes actually doing the signaling. And then they said, okay, well, how do I get the right signal at the right decibel level, you know, so we can get pentillions of them because you you need so many. You can't just have um a small quantity. It's about source, it's about quantity and quality of them. And so they basically looked this study, they looked back at patients so retrospectively across anyone that had been treated with stem cells and those things. And that's when they really said, okay, there's this subgroup of patients. They're doing incredible. Let's figure out what's different with them. And what they realized is they had a very high level of these regenerative exosomes. So then they said, hey, that's the key. It's these regenerative exosomes, it's not the stem cells. And then they said, okay, how do we find these? And that was sort of the discovery that was made with platelets.
SPEAKER_01And and so they the the research then was that they were cardiologists. So this was, I'm guessing, cardiac damage from heart attack or or things like that. And they were looking to see what we could do about that.
SPEAKER_00Exactly, exactly. So they were trying to prevent the damage after a heart attack to or reverse it. And so they were looking for ways to do that. And so this discovery was made with, you know, in the cardiac labs, which is so fascinating. And we still are doing cardiac studies with the FDA product, the PEP that we talked about earlier, the purified exosome product, of course, because that's the founder's passion, but I think there's so many other areas.
SPEAKER_01Amazing. I love diving into the science with you. This is really fun. What do you want to leave our audience with? What do they need to know? You are an expert on skin regeneration. What would you tell people?
SPEAKER_00Well, I think that everyone should be incorporating pallodrived exosomes into their routine. I mean, we have 10 peer-reviewed publications now across so many different areas. And this is truly, like we said, synergistic to what you're doing now. I think we have to start thinking about skincare in a different way. The idea that, again, we're not just topically like correcting the appearance. There's things that we can do that are much more advanced than what we were doing before. And that just to be really careful, I guess, is my third. There's a lot of marketing. You want proof, not promise. So you want peer-reviewed publications, you want a good source, you want mechanism, you want evidence. You don't want to just get caught up into someone's marketing. If the claims look too good, they probably are too good. Because that's what we see so much is these claims are just ridiculous. Exosomes are going to solve autism and all these crazy things. And that that's just not true. So you really want to be focused on, you know, listening to your providers, you know, where you're going for your skincare, your dermatologist, your plastic surgeon, your aesthetic providers. And then, you know, when you're reading online, educate yourself, you know, who's doing these types of studies. Not nine patients, not, you know, we're doing double blind, placebo-controlled, randomized studies. That's what pharmaceutical companies do. And that's what we're doing in skincare. That's the level that you need. This is not biologic's not something you can make in your garage. So it's very complicated and it takes very high quality control. And so those things are gonna be really important.
SPEAKER_01Absolutely. Melissa, thank you so much. It was really good having you on. And there's just so much, as you said, there's so much marketing, there's so much people throw a lot of words around out there. And it's good to really get to like what really works because it's it's your face, it's your skin, and you should know what the right thing is to put on it.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, and I think just understanding that you want to get this regenerative signaling that actually changes cell behavior, and then you want one that has evidence behind it that's actually doing it.
SPEAKER_01That's right. Exactly. I will admit I'm telling you one of David's beauty secrets. So I have this like blueberry flavored like moisturizer. And the only reason I use it is because it feels like I it probably has zero effect, but I just sort of like like, oh, oh, this is I I smell like a blueberry before I go to bed. This is great. Um but I think that if we're if we're if we're really thinking about what you want to work, some advanced science is probably a little better than me smearing blueberry stuff on my face.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, but you can if you love your blueberry and that's part of your team, that's okay. I think you just need to, you know, wait the five minutes before you put it on. And I mean, there's a lot of things. And it depends on the climate we're in and how we feel for the day. Like, you don't have to get rid of all that stuff. But I don't think it's driving kind of what you're looking for in terms of skin longevity.
SPEAKER_01No, it's not. I couldn't tell you.
SPEAKER_00It's making you happy, so that's okay. There's nothing wrong with that. It's a good longevity habit. It's making you happy.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I'm big on being happy. I'm glad that I don't have to give up my blueberry skin cream. I can just put it on afterwards. Work fine.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. And I think, you know, the one thing we didn't talk about, just because you might be interested, is we do you have a hair serum? Clearly, I'm not well, there's actually a point when it may be too late and you may be in that category. But no, we we have a great hair serum. I was very skeptical in the beginning. We went and we did a great clinical trial. We used Canbuild technology to really measure the scalp health, the hair, all of that. And it was really exciting the results that we were able to see for hair. It's not for someone with a shiny scalp, kind of once you're shiny, you're sort of too late. But if you know, there's a lot of people that know they have, you know, the genet history or they're going through menopause or postpartum women losing so much hair. This is a great additive for them because you don't realize how important your skin health is to your hair health. I mean, think about the soil that you put your garden in. The soil needs to be good for the garden to flourish. And what we saw with all these, you know, really intense, close photography on the scalp was how much our product was actually improving the scalp health.
SPEAKER_01That's brilliant.
SPEAKER_00So it's a once-a-day serum on your hair. Okay.
SPEAKER_01That's great to know, because I know a lot of women of a certain age that um listen to this podcast, and that is a sensitivity. And it's not talked about.
SPEAKER_00Like women don't talk about it. They go in and they talk about their face and the wrinkles, and it's almost embarrassing that you know, you're like, oh my gosh, my hair is falling out. I'm going through, you know, all these things. And it and when you see women they're older, they have very thin hair. And it's because over time they've lost, and your hair takes a long time. So the hack with hair is you have to be patient, right? It takes a long time for hair to grow and kind of change the soil and that sort of thing. So we really say, you know, three to four months, be patient, do it every day. Um, but we've seen really good results. Um, and we're just going to be publishing this trial that we did only with women, postpartum and menopause, which is great because it's an underserved segment.
SPEAKER_01That's great to know. Wonderful. So tell me about your longevity hacks, Alyssa. What are you doing?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, so for me, the first is exercise every day. I think that if there's any, you know, longevity drug, it's exercise. I walk probably 20 to 25,000 steps a day. And I think moving around constantly is the biggest thing. I thought second, I think it's your for me, um, kind of what you eat, prioritizing your metabolic health, protein for your muscles, because I think that's so important as we age. And then you got to use skincare in terms of SPF. Like if you're gonna protect your largest organ, you've got to be using some sort of SPF every single day. And then for things that I take, I love creatine, glutathione, magnesium. Okay. How's your sleep? It's excellent. Very important.
SPEAKER_01Nothing worse unless you'd sleep in.
SPEAKER_00Exactly. You're absolutely right.
SPEAKER_01And we mentioned water filters. I have to really focus on drinking enough water every day.
SPEAKER_00You know what? I am not a good water drinker. I have to be like you. I almost have to measure myself and be like, how much have I drank? And because I could go a whole day and drink one glass of water and I'd be fine. Almost like a camel, which is bad for you. So I'm I need my signals to remind myself I gotta do better.
SPEAKER_01Same way. Like sometimes I'll find myself at like it's like seven o'clock at night, and it's like, what why isn't my brain working? What why do I feel terrible? Oh, you like you had a cup of water this morning. So but but then I'm like, oh, I gotta drink 64 ounces of water and and before bed, that's not such a great idea. So yeah, I don't know.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, and I don't really like the taste of water, so I do a lot. I put raspberries, I do a lot of things, that's why I actually like it better. Because when I was younger, I was a Diet Coke addict. And um, so I always like flavor in my drinks, and so now I'm trying to back away from all of that. It's tough.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I I don't drink that stuff. I I do love Diet Coke, but I I haven't had one in years. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Me either. But I was an addict for many years, though I drank a lot, so gotta make up for all that.
SPEAKER_01Wiser and healthier now. Alyssa, thank you so much. Exosome created the product. Check it out. I've tried it and you can see I look amazing. So you could too.
SPEAKER_00So humble.
SPEAKER_01Thanks so much, Alyssa. Take care now.
SPEAKER_00Thank you.
SPEAKER_01That was Alyssa Lask, moving from correction to regeneration. Definitely a worthy direction for skincare, but that also feels like a larger theme for this stage of life. We're not trying to erase ourselves. Let's support the systems we have now, intelligently, consistently, and with evidence. I also appreciate Alyssa's point of view about proof versus promise. There is so much language floating around around wellness, aesthetics. It's marketing. Exosomes, stem cells, peptides, growth factors, longevity, regeneration. You know, these words can be useful or they can just be fog machines. The real question is always where's the evidence? And this is what we're always looking for. What is the mechanism? Who is making the claim? This conversation reminds us that skin is not separate from longevity. It's one of the places where longevity is happening. And yes, I will probably continue to use my blueberry moisturizer because, hey, I just like the way I smell with it. Apparently, as long as I wait five minutes, happiness is still allowed. Encouraged, even. That's it for this week. Stay strong, stay vibrant. We'll see you next time.